The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

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ETHICS: DEFECTS 189
should not bring up their children,
is too
strong- for Their apathy, although not it." "lazy"
(as Pope designated it), is certainly virtue fix d and
fix d as in a frost." l It was originally circumscribed
and frigid, and, even to the end, it failed to appreciate
the multifarious interests of human nature. When
Epictetus counsels (Encheir. Hi.),
"If
you love an
earthen jar, say, It is an earthen jar that I
love, for,
when it is broken, you will not be disturbed if
; you
kiss your little child or your wife, say that it is a human
being whom you are kissing, for, when either of them
dies, you will not be disturbed," 2 he simply lays bare,
in concrete form, the fundamental weakness of the
Stoical indifference. For, surely,
child and wife are
more to father and husband than "a human being" ;
and even the earthen jar, through the power of associa
tion, becomes more to us than a mere thing of earth
and clay, valuable simply for its utility. Again, it may
very well be true that, if a man is unhappy,
it is his
own fault, for God has made all men to be happy ;
but
it does not follow, as Epictetus makes it, that his
unhappiness is no concern of yours (Diss.
iii.
24) ;
and if a man grieves at being parted from you, his
friend,
it is but harsh consolation to tell him that "he
simply suffers the consequences of his own folly," for
he should never have supposed that you two could
remain together for ever.
The defect of the Stoical Ideal is that it does not
sufficiently recognize the emotions. A large section of
human nature (and that a most important one) was
1
Essay on Man, ii. 101. 2
See also Diss. iii. 24.